Oklahoma basketball: Iowa State hands Sooners 5th straight road loss

The Sooners and Trae Young made a gallant second-half comeback, but couldn’t get it over the top and Oklahoma basketball suffered its seventh consecutive road loss at Iowa State, 88-80.

In an unusual reversal of fortunes, a freshman other than Young was the star of the game. Iowa State’s Lindell Wigginton held the nation’s leading scorer in check for most of the game on the defensive end and outscored Young with a game-high 26 points in leading the Cyclones to their third straight home win over a ranked Big 12 team.

Young finished with 22 points on 7 of 21 shooting, and assisted on 11 other Sooner scoring plays. The Sooner superstar was just one of eight from long range, however, and turned the ball over six times. Christian James was the player with the hot hand for OU, scoring 22 points of his own and grabbed a team-high nine rebounds.

The Sooners lost this game in the first half, as they have in several road games recently, falling behind by as many as 17 points. They managed to get the deficit down to 10 points at halftime, scoring the final six points of the half, and opened the second half with a 4-0 start to narrow the Iowa State advantage to a half-dozen.

Oklahoma fought all the way back to tie the game three different times with under five minutes to go, but with the score deadlocked at 77 with 2:13 remaining, a pair of clutch three-point shots by Wigginton and Cyclone senior Donovan Jackson on successive trips down the floor stretched the ISU lead back to six and all but ended the Sooners’ hopes.

Iowa State closed out the game on an 11-3 run to hand Oklahoma its fifth consecutive road loss and third straight loss overall. The 17th-ranked Sooners have lost six of their last eight games and dropped to 16-8 for the season and 6-6 in the Big 12.

Complementing Wigginton’s 26 points, Jackson and fellow freshman Cameron Lard contributed 19 points to the Cyclones’ victory. Lard was an absolute beast on the backboards, getting a number of his points on offensive follow shots. He finished the game with 17 rebounds, nine of those on the offensive glass.

Oklahoma Sooners Basketball

Iowa State outscored the Sooners 15-9 in second-chance points.

Oklahoma somehow won the rebound battle, 40-38, but it seemed that every time the Sooners had a chance for a stop late in the game, Iowa State pulled down a big offensive board that turned into subsequent points.

For yet another game, the Oklahoma bench was virtually non-existent in terms of offensive production. Seven Sooner reserves contributed 11 total points in 62 minutes of action. OU also committed 17 turnovers that were turned into 19 points by the Cyclones.

The result: A fifth consecutive Big 12 road loss and the Sooners’ sixth in their last eight games overall.

Next stop in a season that is rapidly turning toxic for the Sooners is a Tuesday night game at Texas Tech, the Big 12 co-leader, that has not lost at home this season and is seeking revenge for a 10-point loss to Oklahoma earlier this season.

Hard to believe that OU was ranked No. 4 in the country in the Associated Press Top 25 less than a month ago. Since then, the Sooners are 2-6.